Bad Boys by Ann Ferguson

So the basic premise of the article is that African American boys are highly affected by prejudgments made by their teachers. Overall the idea is that a lot of these boys end up in jail because their schools put them there by the way the teachers view them without any prior knowledge, rules in place in the schools, and the way punishments are enforced. These boys are created, and almost manufactured to turn out on the negative side of society. One quote that stood out to enforce that point was when Ferguson said “… as children were tracked into futures as doctors, scientists, engineers, word processors, and fast-food workers, there were also tracks for some children, predominantly African American and male, that led to prison” pg 2.

The schools use of power was a huge factor in this problem. “…School labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined.” I can see how this is possible. My band director had all the faith in the world in me and provided me with all of the tools I needed to succeed. I can see how just as easily a teacher could do just the opposite. We all know teachers make assumptions as to who their students are, and we’ve probably all experienced it either first hand or through others in both favorable and unfavorable ways. If a teacher truly doesn’t like you, they aren’t going to go out of their way to make sure you’re successful. If a teacher is stereotyping and making horrible judgments about their students based on information about their race, like crime, when law enforcement is already racially biased, then what outcome can you really expect?!

I felt like the article was simple to understand, and the way the author began the article made it easy to engage right away and continue reading. As with Rose article from last week, this one had a few wordy issues because of some awkwardly placed vocab, but I found reading through those sentences a few times made them easy to figure out without a dictionary. That was something I didn’t find in the Rose article last week. That reading needed a dictionary, actually, multiple dictionaries, just to get through.

I found this reading easy to relate to the Christensen article when they mentioned the idea of a hidden curriculum (does anyone else feel like they’re stealing when they use the stuff that’s already underlined in the articles???) Christensen spoke about a secret education in the media our children watch, and Ferguson talks about a hidden curriculum that these African American boys are learning about where they fit in society. I thought back to a discussion my class had in FNED about how it’s typically white teachers that are heading these black classrooms, and how is it we expect these kids to learn from someone they feel like they can’t relate to. I just thought that this could also be an important factor as to why some of these kids don’t take their teachers seriously. I know I wouldn’t be able to take someone I couldn’t relate to very seriously. I find it all just a little bit creepy. Overall, the more I read about this stuff, the more brainwashed I feel.

By the way, who else was disturbed by the “Punishing Room?” I envisioned the punishment thing (chokee) that the beastly principal in “Matilda” sent the students to.

A Style Nobody can Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop

First of all, the title alone on this one totally put me off. Anything that has a title that includes the word "postindustrial" immediately sends up red flags. I was right on the red flags because what I really didn't understand in this article was a lot of the vocab (Afro-diasporic, brutally truncated opportunity, phantasmagorical, need I say more?) It was a tough read. I think if it hadn't been so wordy, it would have been much easier to connect with. It's an interesting topic, but I think it could have been far more interesting if written about in a more reader friendly manner.

So overall, Tricia Rose is writing about hip-hop as a culture and its evolution. I honestly knew nothing about the topic before reading this, and didn't realize that this culture had been around for so long and how it even came about. She writes about how the hip-hop culture evolved as a result of low income, and how it has been continually changing since the 1970's (to 1994 when this was written)

This culture is a direct representation of people's lives and what's going on in them. This connects to Christensen in a different way. What is being put out in the community obviously has influence, but this form of expression starts with the community, is put back into the community, and comes back to it in the end, making a full circle. So overall, we're being influenced by the hip-hop culture.

Initially I would have assumed that by hip-hop we were only talking about music, but there's a lot more to it than I would have thought. There's the rap, the break dancing, and the graffiti. I know I'm not the only one that didn't connect all three as culturally significant, and I found that piece of knowledge really cool and interesting.

Stuck in Juno Limbo

The story of Juno is relatively simple. Our rebellious socially awkward Juno has sex with Bleeker and winds up pregnant. She chooses not to have an abortion but to give the baby up for adoption, and tells her father and stepmother her situation and plans. She finds a yuppie couple for a family for the unborn baby, gets hit on by the yuppie dad, breaks up the yuppie couple, gives the yuppie mom the baby, and things go back to normal with Bleeker. The movie ends with Juno and Bleeker singing a cute little duet outside of Bleeker’s house. And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

If we’re taking our cues from this, then Christensen would probably say we’re teaching teenagers that it’s okay to get pregnant. We’re teaching them that all they have to do is give the baby up, that there are no real feelings involved, and that things will just go back to normal. I’d like to hear how easy that all is from an actual teenage mother, because I’m pretty sure you won’t find many with stories like that.

When it came to seeing Juno, I wasn’t really sure what to think. It was okay. I left thinking “I’m glad I didn’t see this at home because tickets are totally $10” I think the fact that the ticket was only $5 was what allowed me to not totally hate the film. I’m pretty sure I laughed when I was supposed to, got angry when I was supposed to, and felt bed when I was supposed to. Although the movie did have some funny little moments, overall it didn’t leave me feeling wowed.

I found the dialogue obnoxious and it left me feeling like the writers tried way too hard to be cool. I found the movie itself pretty irritating. I can’t imagine myself getting pregnant and not freaking out about it. In fact, Juno didn’t really seem to show any strong emotion either way about this little surprise. I also can’t imagine telling my family that I was pregnant and having them be okay with it right away. I just found myself unable to relate to the movie. It wasn’t like I couldn’t relate to the situation, one of my best friends in high school got pregnant at 16.

Another thing I found to be off was the fact that Juno wasn’t ridiculed the way I had imagined. She was a social outcast to begin with, so to me, it seemed like she wasn’t really looked at or treated much differently than she had all along. My friend from high school was also a social outcast, however, she was absolutely tortured when she got pregnant. She would walk down the hallway and people would call her a slut and a whore, even though they knew full well she had only ever been with one guy. I imagined a stronger response from Juno’s peers just because that’s what I had seen with my friend.

It was cool to see a strong female character that didn’t need a man to get through her pregnancy and marry her and take care of her (because we all know women can’t care for themselves) I didn’t like the fact that there weren’t any real consequences for Bleeker’s actions. What was the worst that happened? He and Juno weren’t together for a few months! She has his baby, gives it up, and everything goes back to normal!

I’m not saying the movie wasn’t enjoyable. If it hadn’t at least kept my attention, I would have left the theater. I wasn’t offended, and I wasn’t impressed. Like I said, thankfully it was only $5. Juno was obnoxious, but it wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen. I didn’t really like it and I didn’t really hate it. I guess I’m just stuck in Juno limbo!

December 22, 2001

So all this talk about teenagers got me to thinking back to those years and trying to remember them. In chatting with Jen I remembered that I have maintained a LiveJournal account since the beginning of my freshman year of highschool in 2001! Back to the tender age of 14!!! I found a wicked funny post that just dripped of naivete that I wanted to share with you all. Not just the post itself, but the comment that went along with it. Enjoy!!! (take note of the language, typing, etc)

Posted December 22, 2001
"I'm so comfortable with myself it scares me. Sometimes i wish i were like the other teenagers who are so insecure about themselves. I know myself so well that i never question who i am, or what my sexuality is, or what other people think of me. I just wish i could impose some of that on my other friends. I found myself not too long ago and now i just feel like i cant relate to everything anymore. i wish i could, i want to help all my friends with the problems theyre having. They're not secure with who they are and i want them to be. They question themselves and let other people influence them. Its too much for me. I dont know, w/e."

and my friend Erin commented:
"alisha be glad u dont have those probs
u just have guy trouble
idea:
okay i just told they dude i like about how i feel,
and its actually pretty good!

and be sooooooooo glad u dont question religion
my parents are like ripshit on me"

Intense!

Class yesterday was intense, eh? Jen and I chit-chatted about it quite a bit! I had a lot of lightbulb going off moments during our discussions. In particular, my eyes bugged out a bit when Dr. Bogad talked about how in Juno we're getting the message that women don't need men in the baby department. After seeing the movie, I didn't think twice about what the film was saying about men, but I just wanted to mention that my own reaction in class to that realization amused me. I also found myself wide-eyed during our discussion about Prensky, but for the life of me I can't remember which moment it was that my head shot around to look at Dr.Bogad. It was another one of those "OH I GET IT!" moments! I left class pretty excited and desperately wanting to blog (which I probably should have done) but Jen and I had a date to watch our oh-so-trashy Flavor of Love 3. Signing off, this is Dex

"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky

Marc Prensky's article seemed to be the age old argument of the good old days versus those damn kids. We have our Digital Natives who are our technologically inclined people (which means they learn slightly differently than what was traditionally expected) of the present and the future, and we have our Digital Immigrants, those that didn't grow up in the age of technology and are having to learn about it all through experience.

Very generally the article states that the Digital Immigrants don't want to change teaching styles to be more specialized or fun. Because of all this new technology that the new generation has grown up on, they tend to learn differently/better when teaching styles are changed to include the technology. The article made it seem like the technology was a foreign language of clucks and clicks that outsiders would never be able to learn, which we all know is not the case.

Overall the article was an easy read with only a few things that hung me up. I think what tended to irk me was that I didn't particularly feel like delving into the scholarly big words. Break it down for me, don't say things like "discontinuity" or "dissemination." Make it simple for me, I don't feel like using the dictionary or using my context clues!

Not all people of our generation are automatically technologically inclined. I still have my fair share of people asking me what I'm talking about when I tell them to double click an icon on the desktop. My mother learned the computer quickly, and sometimes I think she's better at all this stuff than I am (I think she may have hacked my e-mail accounts at one point!). It's not like our parents don't know anything or can't learn anything. I mean, after I get lectured about the 15 mile uphill walk to school without shoes she had, my mother's on the computer all evening (creating viruses for all I know.) Solutions to this technological gap between the generations?

P.S. this totally made me think of an awesomely bad true story. So after my grandmother passed away, my eighty something year old grandfather (who is a computer genius) had a mental breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital. Well, in this facility, they let harmless old Pepe on the computer where he decided to hack their whole system and tweak it. Well, needless to say, he wasn't allowed on the computer anymore! Either way, the man knows more about technology than I could ever hope to. He writes viruses and fixes for them in all of his free time and does all kinds of ridiculous computer programming on old school computers where you have to manually give it commands to make it do something!

• “Cartoon images, in particular the Disney movie Peter Pan, were cited by children as their number one source of information.”
• “Duck Tales” seems like a simple cartoon of mischievous young ducks, however, at the root of the cartoon is a plot based on money
• “Popeye” seems to be an innocent cartoon, but it depicts women as inferior, Arabs as thieves, and men as heroes.
• The lack of women in older cartoons, and when they do appear they are depicted like Playboy centerfolds.
• Newer movies like Mulan, Aladdin, and Pocahontas still depict stereotypes, yet more subtly.
• In the end, Cinderella teaches girls that with a change of wardrobe and hair, a prince will find them attractive and come rescue/marry them.

In “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us,” Linda Christensen argues that children take much more from the media than parents and teachers may realize. The author suggests that children as young as three are forming ideas and even stereotypes from the movies, cartoons, and books they are presented with. When children watch these cartoons that seem so innocent, they are potentially forming solid opinions on race, class, gender roles, and even morals.
In presenting this premise to a class, Christensen yields a common response from her students. Just as I would be in a situation like this, the students were defensive. No one wants to think that they were manipulated by a story like Peter Pan or a cartoon like Popeye. It is disturbing to think that the simplicity in the happiness of watching a Disney movie may have influenced my habits in adulthood. This is the same kind of response that Christensen got when she had her own students write about the subject. If it were not for this article, I never would have thought twice about the media I was exposed to as a child.
All of my childhood cartoons depicted white, middle class, heterosexual families. Although my family was considered different for having two moms, I still never thought twice about it. To me, if homosexuality was not represented, then there must have been something bad about it. On the other hand, would I have thought having two moms was such a terrible thing if they hadn’t made it seem like such a bad thing themselves? The only times I saw other races represented in the media when I was growing up was when I watched movies like Aladdin or Looney Tunes. In both of those situations children are exposed to horrible misrepresentations of different cultures. Children are told that Arabs are thieves and that Indians run around with tomahawks and live in teepees.
One of the students in Christensen’s classroom speaks about how she wishes she could just stay ignorant and happy when it came to dissecting these dreams. In “Privilege, Power, and Difference” by Allan Johnson, Johnson speaks about how easy it can be to ignore issues of race and sexism as problems that only belong to people of color or women when we feel like it does not directly affect us. He also states that in the long run these things do affect all of us. They affect how we feel about people of different races, genders, and classes and how we interact with them. Even though this is the case, even I sometimes wish I could stay in the easy and happy world of my ignorant bubble. No one wants to feel like they have been manipulated.
After reading something like this, you have to wonder about the intentions of those putting this media out there to the children. Are they sending out this secret education purposely or are they just all ignorant too? I can say that through my experiences with my two year old niece, she has it a little better in the world of the media. When I was growing up there were not shows like Dora the Explorer or Go Diego Go! There are more shows like that out there, but there is obviously still a lot of work to be done. Old Disney movies are re-released every year and are still highly regarded in our society.
On the other hand, can we really put all of the blame on the Disney movies? I never thought twice about that stuff when I was growing up, but if you live in a family that’s less tolerant of others and you see their views somehow reinforced (even if it was done innocently) in the media, then who is to blame? It’s not totally new to me that this media was distorted, but I never really gave much thought to the impact it could have. Does it really have an impact?